Unstrung Heroes

Rating:
Summary: A Great, Overpowering Memoir
Review: I actually read this extremely moving memoir in hardback (1991) and thought it would make a great film. Too bad: Disney turned it into an exceedingly mediocre film. But the book endures and justifies all the lavish praise heaped on it back it '91.

Rating:
Summary: For an asteroid, this is really great
Review: I am blood-related to this author and even if I weren't, I still would write this review. This is a truly lovely book, full of excitement, pain, hope and friendship. I had not known that life was so much like a rogue asteroid until reading Unstrung Heroes.

Rating:
Summary: As Good As His New Book
Review: I just finished Unstrung Heroes after reading Lidz's terrific new book Ghosty men. In my opinion, this one is every bit as good. I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard. I hope it gets reissued.

Rating:
Summary: A Tribute To My Favorite Lidz Brother, Uncle Harry
Review: I just read of the death of (Uncle) Harry Lidz in the April 8, 1999 New York Times. Of all the mad Lidz brothers described in this great memoir, Harry was my all-time favorite. In memory of the undefeated boxing champ and Abraham Lincoln Brigadeer, here's the poem Harry wrote in 1931 that appears in Unstrung Heroes: The trains scream to a stop/ And the toilweary crowd surges in/ From factory and shop/ Homeward bound for the night with their kin/ Hear that chant, all about/ Sway to it, vacantly/ Clackerty, clickerty/ Wheels spinning, wheels singing/ Hopeful hearts, flying on/ Hearts all dead, grinding on/ Tearful hearts, tugging on/ Hearts with hate, roaring on/ Clackerty, rushing wheels/ Clickerty, spinning wheels/ Centuries, warm with love/ Centuries, cold with fear/ Hear that chant of life's throb/ Swaying on, year by year.

Rating:
Summary: Extraordinary!
Review: I picked this up because I love Franz Lidz's whimsical essays in the Sunday New York Times. He paints like Paul Klee, and his portraits are artistically powerful and often so perfect that even if they lacked the depths of thought that lie behind them, and around them, I believe he would still be a great memoirist.

Rating:
Summary: I'm "crazy" about this book.
Review: I'm "crazy" about this book, which has to do with a kid and his four crazy uncles. I read the book because i really liked the movie, but the book was way better. Heartwarming, hilarious.

Rating:
Summary: IMPOSSIBLE to recamend to highly!
Review: Ihave never read a book that was this good. At one part of thew book I bursty out laughing and later on I could help but start crying! I can't beleive the life of a boy could be so awlful!

Rating:
Summary: You will want to read it again and again, and why not?
Review: Immensely moving, Unstrung Heroes is both funny and unbearably sad. Frequently brilliant, thoughtful, iconoclastic and a delight to read.

Rating:
Summary: Acidly funny, not heartwarming, like the film.
Review: It is always treacherous for a writer to parade his own childhood for others to see - one false move, and the whole effect collapses into bathos. But Unstrung Heroes is a funny, charming memoir, and impresses most of all because of its sturdy grip on a childhood that was not always funny or charming. Melancholy and affecting, a loony tune played with touching disharmony on mournful woodwinds and a noisy klaxon.

Rating:
Summary: The Memoir Hollywood Hacked To Bits
Review: It's interesting to watch the jagged leaps and bounds by which this hilarious, unsentimental Lower East Side memoir became a sentimental tearjerker about a beautiful mother dying of cancer in L.A. That Hollywood gets Jewishness wrong again and again should come as a surprise to no one (Remember Melanie Griffith in "A Stranger Among Us"?) But the story of "Unstrung Heroes" is a rather spectacular example of Disney not getting anything about New York at all. The movie is a sanitized ode to motherhood, that is that it is practically impossible to watch without crying. I cried (many times) while reading the book, but somehow the tears felt more honest.